


Indelible

by MMXIII



Series: The Never Been Better Suite [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Blankets, Body Horror, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Cuddling & Snuggling, Declining Health, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Serious Injuries, sorta - Freeform, weight loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 10:57:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2690306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMXIII/pseuds/MMXIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After decades of neural blockers, sedatives, steroids, cryo-suspension fluids, neuro-toxins, Bucky’s body is falling apart.</p><p>[Or the one where Bucky isn't getting better]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indelible

They’re pressed together when Steve wakes up, bodies flush under warm blankets. It might be three or four in the morning. The augmented sound of cars passing outside implies rain.

He’s way too hot. Burning. Needs some air. Instead he drinks some water from the bottle on the nightstand and settles down against the body nestled alongside him.

All Steve can see of Bucky is one ear and some errant twists of dark hair, greasy and curling stiffly against the pillow-case. It’s cut short now. To stop him from tearing it out. He’s wearing one of Steve’s football hoodies, engulfed in thick cotton and curled inwards on his side. The nape of his neck is tacky with sweat where the hood’s pressed up against it. These days Bucky craves warmth like a drug.

Steve can smell the sweat on him, three or four days old, thick in the unmoving air between them. It’s a good smell, Steve reckons, neither bleach nor blood, just Bucky: honest and wretchedly intimate. 

An ambulance whines a couple blocks over and fades. Bucky twitches, curls his fingers inside his palm. The back of his hand is covered in sore pink crescents the width of a man’s bite.

Steve’s seen the tapes. The recordings. Seen Bucky on his knees. Strung up. Held down. Heard him scream like an animal.

Bucky makes an unhappy noise low in his throat and shudders violently, kicking Steve sharply in the shin.

Steve frowns. He touches Bucky’s waist, palm stroking over the various layers of clothing.

‘Buck.’ 

The hoodie hides the trials of Bucky’s body from the world, but Steve can feel their legacy under his hands. He’s lost weight so fast. Quicker than anything anyone can think of to get him to put it back on.

It’s the drugs.

After decades of neural blockers, sedatives, steroids, cryo-suspension fluids, neuro-toxins, Bucky’s body is falling apart.

Just like their old tenement, right down on its knees.

He’ll eat, but hasn’t been able to keep anything down for the last two weeks. He retches at the sound of running water; sometimes his nose bleeds for hours.

He’s started taking essential nutrients intravenously.

He doesn’t tear at the catheter with his teeth anymore.

It makes Steve  _ache_. What Bucky’s been through. The fact that it never ends.

Sometimes, because the universe is infinitely cruel, Bucky wakes up thinking he’s in Brooklyn way back when. Other times Steve struggles to wake him at all, like Bucky’s buried so far down in his head away from the world that he forgets it’s there.

Steve hasn’t slept through the night in almost a month; Bucky can’t sleep unless he’s sedated.

Bucky whimpers and jams the fleshy part of his right hand, the tender skin between the thumb and the wrist, against his teeth. Steve nudges his hand against Bucky’s forearm, mindful of the catheter, and eases it away from his face.

Bucky convulses like he’s been stabbed and chokes out something desperate-sounding in a language that Steve doesn’t understand. He’s panting now, heaving in shallow snatches of air. He reaches for his mangled shoulder, claws at the stump obscured by the loose sleeve.

Steve moves his hands over Bucky’s shoulder, one at the front, one at the back, and massages it gently. Bucky’s skin is burning hot to the touch, flushed and tacky with moisture, the hair around his ears curling together damply just like it used to in the summer.

‘Buck’ he whispers.

Bucky shudders again and snarls through clenched teeth.

‘Bucky-’

Steve can feel the muscles shifting under his hands. He gets ready to brace as Bucky’s twitches again. It’s been a while since he’s been strong enough for physical violence, but adrenaline is pretty serious stuff. The nightstand drawer is full of morphine capsules, and shots of what Tony likes to call ‘horse tranquilizer’. Tony’s a bit of a dick, actually, but he means well.

This time, despite the overwhelming odds, Bucky simply opens his eyes.

He rolls back into Steve’s chest, eyes red-rimmed and stained against tacky skin, exhausted. There’s blood in the creased corners of his mouth. Between his teeth. Steve unconsciously makes space for him to lie flat on his back and tucks the edge the blankets around him. Bucky blinks slowly, lethargically, struggling to focus.

‘You ok?’ Steve murmurs. He leans down and shifts his arms resting low over Bucky’s stomach, soothes his hand down Bucky’s side. Repeats the motion propped up on his elbow, other hand stroking lightly through Bucky’s filthy hair, pushing it back from his face. It’s so greasy it leaves a film of oil against the undersides of Steve’s fingers. Bucky’s mouth curls into the dazed suggestion of a smile when he makes out Steve’s face. He makes a soft sound, low in his throat. Steve strokes the crown of his head, the fragile plane that flanks the eye-socket, where the skull is thinnest, his cheek, the hinge of his jaw. He presses his mouth to the damp, sticky skin of Bucky’s temple with a reverence he’s never once felt in church.

Bucky’s eyelids are already slipping when Steve pulls back, exhaustion heavy in the hollows of his face. He can’t quite get out from under the pull of Bruce’s specially engineered sedatives.

He shifts sluggishly under the blankets and settles with his face turned into Steve’s throat. Steve’s hand slips naturally down Bucky’s lower back as he shifts closer. He can feel Bucky’s hair against his chapped lips.

Bucky’s fingers curl lightly into the front of Steve’s tshirt, breath slowing.

‘S’nice’ he slurs into the damp, cloying air between them, syllables dazed and heavy under his tongue.

‘S’real nice…when you hold me’.

Steve’s eyes sting. He stifles a sob, fighting the tremors in his throat as he reaches across Bucky’s body to check the catheter tube has some slack. 

It’s then that he realizes: the fabric is damp against the back of his hand. He tucks his nose under the lip of the blankets and winces at the sour smell of urine. They’ve been spooned right up together so he’s lying in it too, pyjama pants soaked through around his hip. 

Every day it’s something else, a sound, a smell. Some tortuous shard working its way through Bucky’s head like a surface-seeking splinter. Tearing through the beautiful, infinitely fragile fibres of Bucky’s brain.

Steve's voice only cracks a little:

_ ‘ _ Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I'll be right here _'_

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Might change up later if the mood strikes  
> Thanks for stopping by! ^^


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